Malaysian Nature Society working to protect forests

New Straits Times 24 Jan 11;

KUALA LUMPUR: The Malaysian Nature Society is launching a nationwide blitz to halt the conversion of natural forests to plantations and protect the country's wildlife.

Its president, Associate Professor Dr Maketab Mohamed, is currently on a roadshow to interact with MNS' 13 branches and empower them to realise its new conservation manifesto.

Dr Maketab, 51, who recently took over as MNS' 20th president, said engaging all the branches was the first step in realising the 70-year-old society's manifesto towards making "tangible conservation impacts" on the ground.

"The branches were inadvertently sidelined in the past as most activities were centred around its headquarters or the secretariat. MNS Sandakan will be our 14th branch."

Dr Maketab, a Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) lecturer who holds a PhD in Watershed Science with over 25 years of professional experience in environmental hydrology, added: "The MNS secretariat will still go ahead with activities of national significance but the branches will not be watching from the sidelines as they will also carry out local or state-level conservation activities.

"Therefore the branch leaders need to engage relevant agencies in their state or locality such as the Wildlife and National Parks Department, Forestry Department, Marine Parks Department. Fisheries Department or, in the case of Johor, the Johor National Parks Corporation.

"Our core focus is the conservation of the natural environment.

"We are, however, not anti development but pro sustainable development with minimum impact on the surrounding natural and social environment. Human lives are sacred and so are all other lives on earth."